


Happy, Blind Things

by fightingtherobots



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Daydreaming, First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 10:52:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/722231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fightingtherobots/pseuds/fightingtherobots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester is currently 17 years old and cutting class. He meets Castiel, a strange boy with a strange name, and, well, it isn't Dean's fault his imagination runs away with him on a day like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy, Blind Things

There was once was a young man. Well, he wasn’t really a young man. In actuality, he was merely a boy, but Dean Winchester had been a young man for so long that it didn’t really matter. Right now he was 17 years old- _truly old_ \- and a brother, a parent, and a soldier. Of course, he was technically only a brother, but the other two were important.

Right now, Dean hated high school. Right now, he hated everything around him but his father (who wasn’t around), his brother (who he loved more than himself), and the feeling of miles of pavement under the pristine, black body of his car. Right now, Dean did not want to be sitting in a cramped, humid high school classroom with sticky desks and obscene fluorescent lights.

He wanted to be with his father. He wanted the heavy feel of a gun in his hand and the steady thrum of purpose in his chest. He did not want to dissect Shakespearian language but rather take a creature apart.

He could not get what he wanted, however. He hardly ever did, so the feeling of disappointment and bitter resentment barely phased him. He locked them away in a small box which was not made to be opened; like a small child’s piggy bank (an item which he had never owned), only a hammer would be able to break inside to spill out the volatile contents. But until that destructive force came upon him, he thought about ditching the next class.

The day warm and sweet, framed like a picture through the classroom window. Unable to be cut because of recent rains, the grass grew lush and long. A soft wind ruffled through the blades. Dean decided he would not be able to sit inside another classroom.

The bell rang, a shrill noise that jarred the students around him. They began to pile their books in neat stacks and arrange pencils in orderly rows so they could move to the next class as efficiently as possible.

_Blind things,_ Dean thought. _Happy, blind things. Lucky, blind things._

_Remain blind,_ he hoped for all of them.

His items were collected haphazardly. Dean did not care about his books or his pencils. He did not care about moving to the next class efficiently because he had no intention of going. He did not care for this kind of learning. Dean would rather have a knife in his hands, or a pound of salt. You could do things with those items. They were material, they were real. They were not sonnets to others, but they were sonnets to him.

No one stopped him as he left the building. He doubted anyone would want to. As with any town he had been in, this one did not suit him, and those around him could feel it. He was a puzzle piece from another riddle here, and he did not fit. Dean had a distinct sense that he belonged to the feeling of the car’s engine on the endless road. 

The grass bent underneath his boots. It swayed around him as if acknowledging his presence. Dean had eyes the color of the grass beneath his feet, and so the blades thought he was one of them. Hello, they sang to him. You are welcome here. 

Dean did not speak the language of the grass, however, and so he trod on the dancing blades as he sought out a place that could not be seen from the stiff, uniform windows of the trap he had escaped. A crisp wind ran its fingers through his hair. The breeze lovingly turned his attention to a corner of the field that hid in the shadow of scarred oak tree. He headed toward it with reverent steps. 

The oak was a mile high. Not a meticulous mile measured by humans, but the kind that only occurred in nature. Its leaves danced along with the grass that grew sparsely between the shadow the tree cast and its roots that broke the soft soil around it. It was in a small place between two roots that Dean rested, facing away from the school in the childish belief that if he could not see it, it did not exist. 

The school did not disappear, however, but it seemed to, along with the rest of the world as Dean closed his eyes. A brush of sunlight fluttered through the branches to skim his face, a vain effort to add more freckles across his nose. Sleep tugged at Dean, but his twined his fingers in the soil to fight the urge. The dirt was soft and coated his fingertips, filling in their swirls with earth. He was content until he heard the sound of a person clearing their throat. 

In the moment before Dean opened his eyes, he hoped viciously that the throat clearing had not come from an authority figure. He had seen many of these authority figures in his many different schools, and each one was easily irritated and irrationally temperamental. They did not understand that Dean had no desire to discuss the importance of poetry. 

His eyes open, he saw instead that there was another boy looking at him. Perhaps his age, the other had a disheveled shock of black hair atop his head and startlingly blue eyes that peered at Dean as if Dean should not exist. Dean had had that thought several times before, but that was not something he wanted to share. Instead, he asked the most eloquent question that came to mind.

“What?”

“This is typically my spot,” the other replied. “I was not expecting you to be here.” 

“Do you want me to move?” Dean had no intention of moving. The temptation of closing his eyes again to pretend that the other boy had disappeared drifted across his mind like the smell of fresh baked pie, but he thought it best to resist for now. 

The other boy did a small dance of shifting feet and unsure shoulders. A different temptation had crossed his mind. He fought it gallantly. “No, you may stay. Would you mind if I joined you?”

Dean minded. Then again, perhaps he did not. The other boy had the deepest eyes he had ever seen. The idea of gaining the privilege to see those eyes smiling appealed to him more than it should have, and so he agreed. In an act of good will, he shifted as if to make room for the other boy. 

“I’m Dean.” 

“My name is Castiel.” 

_A strange name for a strange boy._ Dean did not say the thought aloud. He lazily mused it would not be polite, though typically he did not mind acting on an impulsive thought. He thought it was okay to be rude in a new town where no one knew him and he had no reason to attempt to make friends. 

This strange boy with the crystalline eyes did not matter. He would be another face Dean would forget. 

“I’m new in town,” Dean finds himself explaining. “I didn’t know this was your spot, or whatever. So are you free this period?”

The other boy- Castiel- hummed a soft acknowledgement. “If only.” 

He had taken the spot between a gnarled, twisted root and a newer, softer one to Dean’s right. Castiel leaned his head back so his dark strands of hair entangled with the curls of shadow on the bark of the trunk. He stared up at the sky, apparently having decided to memorize the intangible wisps of clouds that passed overhead.

“You’re skipping too?” A hint of surprised leaked into Dean’s voice. Castiel looked too studious to be ditching class. 

“I can’t stand my math class,” the other confessed. A faint look of disgust ghosted across his face. “The people it’s filled with… I much prefer the outdoors to the classroom.”

“Same, dude,” Dean muttered. And then they were quiet: they had both ran out of polite words and so, having not sought each other’s company in the first place, they were quiet as the wind shifted the leaves above them and blades beside them in a soft, rustling tune. 

They sat in silence, both lost in their own worlds. Dean’s world consisted of secretive glances at Castiel. The other boy did not seem to notice, and soon Dean found himself in a daydream centering around the beautiful boy beside him. 

Atypical of Dean, the thoughts weren’t centered around sex or the like but rather sitting underneath that very tree with intertwined hands and soft lips. Drifting toward sleep in the spring warmth and oddly companionable silence, Dean’s thoughts swirled through his head in a series of simple brushing of skin to skin and little emotions: soft hands, gentle, firm, stubborn, pushy, loving. 

He could see them talking, his eyes intently focused on the other’s soft, pink lips as he told simple tales of family and school. Family was everything to Dean, and he could almost imagine giving away small stories of Sammy’s misadventures tied with ribbons of fond smiles and light laughter. Dean could see the smallest shift, in his hazy dream, of the two of them leaning closer as if the breeze was pushing them together. They would kiss, of course, because nature willed it and Castiel had the most fascinating eyes. Like cerulean pools, they made Dean think of those lakes he’d heard about, where people drown because the bottom is farther away than they think. 

Dean was fairly sure he was struggling under water as sleep pulled him farther and farther into the sunlit, luminous world of his dream. Their kiss, chaste at first with a simple pressure of chapped lips, may turn to more or dissolve into shy laughter and flushed cheeks. The action catches them both by surprise, yet there is no shock in finding their fingers interlaced as if they were created to be locked together. 

Just as he was nearly asleep, the sound of the bell screaming through the school broke the haze that had descended upon Dean. He sat up and all at once the reality of how his daydream would end in the solid, painful real world hit him: 

His dream was impossible. 

Dean would not have Castiel’s hand in his or the gentle, hesitant brush of lips a first kiss would bring. He would not be able to talk with the other boy underneath the shade of the protective oak. Those were the facts, laid out in front of Dean as simply and as plainly as empty shells lined up in a row, waiting to be filled. He would never see Castiel again after his father came into town, inevitably bloodstained and scarred, and told him and his brother that it was time to go. They would obediently pack up and leave, abandoning any enemies, friends, or lovers. 

The object of Dean’s terminal affections sighed beside him and began to stand. The sound of shuffling shoes in the dirt and a steadying hand slipping along rough bark filled the spring air. Dean scrambled to stand as well, and soon they were standing on the uneven ground under the shifting leaves facing one another.

The grass continued its dance as the two locked eyes. Castiel’s lips were parted the slightest bit, as if there was a word on his tongue that wanted to slide out. Dean wanted to hear it; in his newfound infatuation, a sticky residue left over on his mind from his daydreaming, Dean wanted to hear anything the other could possibly say. 

The silence and staring between them stretched, pulling against the normal amount of time and pushing toward awkward, yet their staring match continued with baited breath. Inexplicably, each was waiting for something from the other. 

“Dean-“ 

The word escaped his lips only to fall to the ground, dead, along with the rest of Castiel’s thought. A single heartbeat had the time to be carried by a gust of wind before Dean closed the space between them by pressing his lips to Castiel’s. The kiss was hurried: it was a rash act of stupid bravery on Dean’s part and surprise on Castiel’s. 

Castiel was frozen to the spot as Dean pulled away. The wind ruffled his hair as he stood, the movement in stark contrast to his immobility. 

“I’m sorry,” Dean began. He could not meet Castiel’s eyes. He had effectively drowned, and now he was lost in the swaying blades of grass as he looked down at his feet. 

“Dean Winchester.” The other boy’s voice was gentle, forgiving. 

Dean looked up, the hope on his face painfully apparent. He did not like feeling like this, as if he was the one the gun was pointed at, not the one with a finger on the trigger. He saw that the other boy was not angry, but instead had his previous expression of shock replaced with the barest hint of a smile. He could put the Mona Lisa to shame; he was lovely. 

Dean smiled, his practiced, self-assured smile falling into place with the same ease he had knocking bottles off a fence for target practice. 

“Same time tomorrow?” he asked. Across the field, students were filing out of the school and onto buses, still blind and orderly according to Dean’s practiced eye. 

A flicker of something Dean could not name passed through the pools of Castiel’s eyes. It splashed and rippled the surface, but the emotion did not drip down into his smile. 

“Perhaps,” he answered, and then walked off. 

Dean was left to stand beside the tree, lost in the wilderness of his thought. He had not been rejected, though he was unsure if his emotions had been completely returned. He refused the thought, and focused instead on how the other had come to know his surname. Dean had not introduced himself with it, nor had he been in town long enough for his name to get around. He had yet to speak in class or in the hall, and he had never seen Castiel before. 

Dean shrugged, a fairly eloquent motion, and watched as the problem slid from his shoulders and onto the ground with a drop of rain from the graying sky. He would return to the tree the next day, and from there he would see what would happen.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried a bit of a different writing style on this one- I hope you liked it! This may eventually have a sequel, but for now I feel that it is fairly complete in and of itself.


End file.
